


sweetest submission (drinking it in)

by mother_hearted



Category: Fate/Grand Order
Genre: Background Relationships, Bondage, Canon-Typical Violence, Darkness, Empathy, Ensemble Cast, F/F, First Time, Flirting, Intrigue, M/M, Sensory Deprivation, Xeno
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-23
Updated: 2018-03-23
Packaged: 2019-04-06 23:08:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14067576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mother_hearted/pseuds/mother_hearted
Summary: Like a warm bath, he lets the darkness surround him, cover him, soothe him.He whispers,"Come in, Avenger."





	sweetest submission (drinking it in)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [overplays](https://archiveofourown.org/users/overplays/gifts).



_this is his body_  
this is his love  
such selfish prayers  
i can't get enough 

\- florence + the machine: bedroom hymns.

 

**NIGHT ONE: SHADOW OF A SIREN.**

Chaldea's halls are flooded with light despite the hour the clock reads out. Ritsuka has long since gotten used to it, turning in to sleep when the clock reads eleven pm despite the day's previous activities and exhaustion. Much like he's gotten used to the freeze dried ingredients in his meals, providing nutrition even if they lack flavor. His need for food, for sleep, for water, they're reminders that he's one of two humans on base. 

He's used to that too.

Ritsuka cracks a yawn, hand belatedly covering his mouth when he notices his shadow against the wall. Expectation is the last thing he expects to see. It looks like it's waiting for him to take his next step. It's unsettling. For a long moment Ritsuka doesn't move. 

_You would wish to meet me, an Avenger, once more?_

Ritsuka drops his arm back to his side and takes a step. And then another, another, and another, eyes not leaving the shadow stalking him step for step. 

When he reaches his room his warped intruder does not follow, his meager shadow a small dark puddle beneath his heels instead. 

When he sleeps he dreams. 

He does not leave Chaldea. 

When he wakes it's not with disappointment.

More like a hazy sense of _anticipation._

 

**NIGHT TWO: HOME OF ESPRIT.**

The return from the singularity training grounds is a smooth one, albeit made noisy by his companions. Carmilla and Mata Hari mingle together like oil and cream, gelling together to suffocate enemies and allies alike. Ritsuka is grateful for their partnership but feels much like a plant withering at its roots, sucked dry from enthusiasm and a voracious hunger for violence. 

So many Wyverns. So many screams. Mata Hari's laughter weaving around Carmilla's hisses of delight. 

At least they recovered several Rider statues... 

At least they did that.

Ritsuka leans his forearms on the console and lets out a tired breath. When he blinks he sees his shadow bleed out underneath him, rippling like a pool of water. Inviting. _Come in._ Warning. _I'll pull you in._ Two contradictory feelings from wave to wave, from the ruffled tips of Ritsuka's hair to the point of his elbows. 

Ritsuka is snapped from his trance by Carmilla's cutting tone.

"Feeling anemic, Master?"

Her golden eyes are sharp behind her mask. 

"Just winded." Ritsuka says, not falling for her bait. She gives him a hard time but Ritsuka knows her preferences, her weaknesses; cute girls. Not boys. 

"Fufu, should I perform CPR then Master!" Mata Hari bounds over with a half turn, a move that twirls the fabric around her arms and waist. Ritsuka is always left a little hypnotized with how quickly and smoothly she moves and he replies a beat too late, caught in her trap. He feels the air prickle cold and Carmilla's eyes lighten up with fire even though her tone is nothing but chilled.

"He is but a boy, not even a man, you have much better toys to play with."

He watches Mara Hari brighten with mischief and pleasure, Carmilla drawn to her presence just as she is to the long bare curve of Mata Hari's neck where the lightest of white scars from puncture wounds exist.

Ritsuka feels himself blush in embarrassment and quickly leaves the room with a hasty thanks.

As a Master he's happy for all the Servants who find love in Chaldea.

But it doesn't mean he's prepared to witness every single flirtation between them.

Love and romance... It's hard not to think of the two when he finds the Queen he went out statue hunting for in the first place.

"Hello, Marie."

"Ah! Master." Marie all but floats up onto her feet from her chair. "I heard you went out today for me! Me, Marie! I'm so blessed to have a champion such as yourself." She smiles brightly, her charm seemingly brightening the room. It's impossible not to smile back at her. 

"I guess you already heard."

"News travels fast like Archer's hot cakes, ah, I hope he will take my requests for brioche into consideration next time..." She drifts off into thought, mouth gaping as imaginary dinner plates flood her vision. At least, Ritsuka assumes. Before she can space out completely he asks what's on his mind.

"Can you tell me what France was known for, Marie?"

"Oh! You wish to know more about my beautiful country?" At his nod, she speaks of their government, their architecture, their fine music, fromage, and wine. Ritsuka is pulled back to the Singularity, Marie's time yet not, a Queen revived to the glory days of her youth. _Vive La France_ , she smiled even as she greeted her second death. His sadness like a familiar friend, he tucks it away when she says, "and the home of esprit."

"Esprit? What's that?"

"The lively wit to charm and enamor those around you, of course! There is no more romantic a country than France and no more romantic people than the French!" Marie is full of pride as she delivers her declaration. 

_It's not obvious, but he does seem to be enjoying himself..._

"So it means you're good at flirting?" Ritsuka smiles sheepishly at her peal of laughter, her cheeks flushing happily.

"You're too forward, Ritsuka! There has to be a pacing to these sorts of things, a game, a satisfying turn and twists until the end."

Ritsuka thinks of his shadow warping strange and alien, mocking him, challenging him to act. A certain pacing, huh. 

"I think I understand."

"Are you playing a game with someone?" Marie clasps her hands together next to her cheek, imploring, impish. "Ah, I want to know!"

"You're too forward, Marie."

She laughs at his twisting of her words.

"Well then." But then he's saved from her teasing and inquiries when Jeanne spots them, a book and bar of chocolate in her hand. He leaves them to what he suspects is the slow beginning of a book club and doesn't watch for his shadow until he hits the door to his room.

He sees the outline of his frame bleed out in front of him, a hand moving towards his throat. He can't see, can't tell if the hand is choking him or caressing him.

He goes inside and his lamp senses his movement, flickers to life. 

He sleeps deep and feels a chill pass over his skin. 

When he wakes up, he's ravenous. 

 

**NIGHT THREE: THE MONSTER AT THE END OF THE BOOK.**

Mash bends at the waist when she looks at him wheezing on the ground. Maybe lying down on his back to catch his breath was a little much.

"Senpai." Mash has already checked his vitals and worry is blessedly not twisting her features into a concerned grimace. "You did two miles more than usual today. Your quest to improve your stamina is improving! But I think you should take on a new quest to pace yourself as well."

Ritsuka opens his mouth and gasps but tries to do it in an agreeing manner.

Mash sighs before offering her hands for Ritsuka to grip. She lifts him up with ease and Ritsuka catches Carmilla over Mash's shoulder staring down intently at Ritsuka's feet. In the bright simulated sun high above them, his shadow is squashed and short behind his heels. 

She frowns frosty and looks away. 

Ritsuka doesn't get a chance to question her before an ambush hits. Lamia slither out in waves and Mash takes up position in front him. Carmilla takes front, tall and menacing, a low laugh spilling from her lips before she spills her first drop of blood.

"I will peel back your scales and devour your life, no matter how meager the taste!"

Her nails scratch against her staff and she casts, quick steps in her heels, her accuracy just as deadly as her speed. The Lamia are too slow for Carmilla, despite how their attacks burn when they hit an Assassin's skin. Mash casts a shield buff before Carmilla can breach the cluster of the snakes, saving her from their fangs and claws and flame. 

"You are not good enough for my Castle, so die here in my makeshift garden!" Carmilla shouts and Ritsuka's heart bumps heavy when Carmilla's next jab of her staff beheads the largest of the group, sending the remaining Lamia into a frenzy, launching themselves as a group at the vampire.

"Master!" Mash shouts, "She's gone too far into their den."

"We're too far apart, let's move!" Out of breath but forcing his lungs to cooperate, Ritsuka shouts back and follows behind Mash. When he's in range to code cast, it's an Evade buff and his heart stalls at the clear view, at the blood and ripped bodies, Carmilla's arms burned, her own blood from her cut lips darkening her mouth a ghoulish red.

She catches his eye before she turns to face the last of the group, and her voice is deadly when she speaks, like a royal woman on her balcony making her decree, "Wretched girls, nothing more than ghouls in children's tales. I am true terror and you shall be terrorized by me!"

Ritsuka has only seen her Iron Maiden worked on single targets, never a group. But when she summons her noble phantasm, all four Lamia are gathered up, stuffed inside, and bled.

At least, that's what he assumes. His eyes close once he sees them collected off the ground like children's toys. 

Mash gathers the spoils dropped by the snakes and Ritsuka gives her a weak smile of thanks. He's tired, no matter how deep he sleeps, how dreamless his sleep, he's tired. Like his brain has rested but his body refuses to cooperate. Tense in preparation for a battle to come. 

Carmilla approaches him with her blood red mouth and heated burns in the console room once the shift is complete.

"Master."

Ritsuka looks up at her with concern. He frowns and says, "You did well today. You need to rest."

"Keep your sentiment to yourself. I have words of warning for you."

His eyebrows shoot up.

"If you do not settle the matter with your stalker, I will cut out his essence myself."

Ritsuka starts with a step back, gaping. "You noticed?"

"For better or worse, I am at home with the darkness. The darkness is where wretched women such as me belong. Enshrined for my evil deeds and enslaved because I lack regret. That man - you met him while you were catatonic."

"...he is attached to me. That's true. But why would you 'cut out his essence?'"

"He is unwanted. He does not belong. A fool who will not reveal himself, trapped in the pit of darkness where he believes himself both safe and threatened."

Ritsuka remembers the nightmare not dream Carmilla 'woke' him up from. He's no stranger to his mind and spirit going where his body cannot. She was a proud noblewoman who brutally murdered thousands of girls for her amusement. Elisabeth Bathory became infamous in history, her story twisted, a sadist believed to bathe in the blood of young girls to retain her youth. Forever linked in the mind of history's consciousness as a blood drinker Carmilla was born and held captive by the Throne of Heroes. 

Her myth became reality, separating herself from... herself. Carmilla and Elizabeth. 

Ritsuka recalls the dark prison he was kept in once more, words like stones being thrown into his skull,

_They tell me to hate, to kill, to bury all my foes! And so that is what I shall be! I shall exact my vengeance on the world, as you wish me to!_

Carmilla had cried out in the darkness, not out of regret for who or what she had become, but fear for the self she was now, fear of being alone now.

Despite the bloodied lip woman peering down at him coldly, Ritsuka finds himself smiling. She falters just slightly, a twitch in her neck.

"I'll take care of it, Carmilla. And then you won't have to look after me."

"I said no such thing." She scowls. Affronted he would bring up the reason _she_ brought up his shadow. 

He smiles wider, corners of his eyes tightening. 

"How did you approach Mata Hari?"

Her cool mask slides into nonchalance. 

"I didn't."

"Huh?" Ritsuka asks bemused.

"I didn't," she repeats with a smug air about her. Enjoys the dumb look on Ritsuka's face for another moment before she speaks again. "She invited me inside and I took her."

Trying not to flush and think about the literal implications of her words, Ritsuka nods in understanding. 

"...I'm good." He says lamely.

Carmilla smiles with blood red lips and it's bone chilling.

"Have a good night, Master."

She's laughing at him, he knows. 

When she's gone he looks down at his Shadow and doesn't see a hair out of place.

 

**NIGHT THREE: THE LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS.**

His clock reads eleven pm when he settles into bed in his pajamas. He's on his back all of five minutes when he reaches over and manually turns off his lamp, casting him in complete darkness. Like a warm bath, he lets the darkness surround him, cover him, soothe him.

He whispers,

"Come in, Avenger."

At the feel of his blanket and sheet slowly being pulled down his body, his heartbeat skyrockets, and in the dark room he can't see, so he closes his eyes instead, lets his mind kick into overdrive instead. A man clad in black, blending into the darkness exposing his waiting body. His body shivering in fear, in anticipation. He stands at the foot of his bed and he sees every inch of Ritsuka the blanket reveals.

His face flushes hot.

Another memory spills over.

_... hmm. I like the look on your face._

"A-ah!"

Except there's hands(?) at his shoulders, at his waist, too many touching all at once and in his mind there is not one man but several, their hands unbuttoning his top, another set lifting his waist, his hips, peeling his bottoms off and exposing him in full. Like tendrils, like claws, like fingers, his brain can't decide, recalls the dark claws of death Avenger wielded, knows he is as much monster as he is man. 

So it becomes all of them, waiting to ravage him, ravish him, their feel cool and smooth he's lead into a sitting position and his legs hang off the side of his bed. 

Something tickles just as it pinches, caresses as it scratches, the soft inner flesh of his hips, his thighs, his armpits, the back of his knees. In the darkness he should feel small, like a tiny particle among millions that make up space. Instead he feels like a universe to be explored, his pulse points galaxies, the pores on his skins stars dying and being reborn as dead skin sheds and falls. 

"Are you afraid?"

Avenger's voice comes from all sides. 

Ritsuka speaks into the abyss.

"I'm afraid." But it's okay. No. That's not right. "And it's okay." Hands all over him squeeze him in satisfaction, the hands squeezing his thighs make his cock jump to life and Ritsuka hisses at the claws that scratch up his pecs, over his nipples, dig into his collarbone while hands hold open his knees, rub his thighs, work the meat of his muscles from tense to tender.

"Do you hunger?" 

The next question comes and Ritsuka answers despite shuddering at the pinch to his nipples, at the nails biting into the side of his hips. 

"Yes."

"Have you become a beast of need?"

"No."

He holds in a whimper when he feels a grip around his shaft, too strong a tendril, a hand, a claw, his back arches and he knows Avenger can see him react. 

"Then what are you, Ritsuka Fujimaru?"

Ritsuka opens his eyes and stares into the darkness, his chest heaving, sweat already laying wet where his skin sticks together. 

"I'm your Master."

Like with the shadow who waited for him expectantly, like with the shadow that blossomed and waved beneath him, Ritsuka looks into the darkness and waits. 

"Haha..." Laughs the darkness, quiet and small. "You learned to roar like a tiger after all."

Ritsuka closes his eyes.

Waits, and hopes.

It's then he feels the tip of a claw, a talon, a finger, a shadow press to his slit, and he feels the thick stretch of pre-come pull away from where it sticks to his skin, his cock burns, his hips helpless not to press forward and earnestly follow. In his mind he sees a white viscous band pull and fade into the darkness, and then like pop rocks a spark ignites in front of him. His eyes snap open. Bright mana white blows out the frame of the shadow, the monster, the man in front of him. His pallid skin lacks luster, cheeks smooth like porcelain but they do not crack when full lips part and teeth flash. His eyes are sharp like his teeth, golden gleamed and cross bearing. Beautiful like cut glass for churches. Old like stained glass for churches. Wise to the sins of man like the cross that bore death and lead to rebirth.

Light bleeds back into darkness like a lonely candle losing its meager flame in the dark corner of a room.

Ritsuka is swallowed up by the darkness, held by the darkness, and then there is rough material under his thighs, gloved hands catching his hips and there is a man, a monster, a shadow underneath him, pressing and aching for him. 

"Take me." Ritsuka says, mouth dry, throat tight, mind fueled with the thought of hundreds of shadows consuming his body. 

The darkness lets out a sharp inhale, words Ritsuka cannot parse, a language he has never known. 

"Take me," he says again. Nerves on fire. Cock heavy between this legs. And then: "I'm waiting, Edmond."

Like a plague unleashed on his body, the hands, the tendrils, the shadows seize him, bind his wrists and arms behind his back, force his head back exposing his throat, his needy cock, his trembling thighs.

"I was nothing but your Abbe Faria."

A denial, a rejection, but hopeful, not hopeless. Ritsuka sees the bright spot of hope in his mind and pushes his way into the darkness to free it.

"I want you to be my Edmond."

"I am not _that_ man. You know the fate of the Avenger class, I will never receive the same end as Edmond Dantes."

Ritsuka shakes his head against his binds. Takes the oppressive silence and shoves it back with his words.

"You're him all the same."

A gentle but firm acceptance. 

There's nothing until a too half hearted snort and words to match.

"Take you... Aren't you the one taking me?"

Ritsuka smiles into the darkness and lets it feel his pleasure. The answer he receives is promising, Edmond's gripping and raising his waist. 

"Master," he says, voice dark and excited like it was the hall of judgement, when he was having fun. "Take me well."

"H-Haaah...!"

He feels the blunt head of his cock against his hole, slick, pressing until the tip opens his up. Ritsuka shudders and his thighs start to shake just as the pressure leaves and comes back, no fingers to work into him, so he uses his cock instead. It's slow, Ritsuka's breath leaves him push by push, until the head of his cock is firmly inside, hot, thick, he pulls out completely and Ritsuka whines.

He plays with his hole, shadows keeping him bound, Ritsuka submits with his mouth open and drool sliding down his chin when he's halfway inside. His toes curl uselessly, his fingers flex uselessly, and Ritsuka decides to push back.

His voice is needy and high, only in the darkest of darkness can he hide his flushed face.

_"Edmond."_

The gentle rocking inside his body is replaced with a deep thrust, so deep Ritsuka throws his head back and shouts. The gland that leaves him seeing white on the back of his eyelids is pounded mercilessly, Ritsuka's voice left choppy and breathless. 

"Can you withstand my assault Master?"

Ritsuka keens.

"Can you once again defeat the prideful beast you defeated in the halls of Chateau d'If?"

Even being fucked half out of his mind Ritsuka hears his real question, can he steal away the pride of a man who believes there exists no hope or love within him?

Ritsuka rolls the dice, whimpers out words that are no less true without or without his voice.

"I've beaten you in your domain. I've taken you in mine. I've, _ah_ , already won!"

Pleasure floods him hot and he grips Edmond tight, squirms and spasms around him as he comes, hands forming tight fists as he nearly shrieks his way through orgasm.

The cock pushing into his hips slows to a stop and Ritsuka sees the bright pop of white through his eye lids. Edmond's body glows under him as he licks Ritsuka's spilled come off his fingers. His pale hands like his pale cheeks, he sits on Ritsuka's bed in his slacks and vest, buried deep in Ritsuka. 

Ritsuka looks down at the shadows encircling him, how they curl like smoke, like chains, his eyes blink in a daze. Edmond smiles a slow sharp grin at him, his skin still glowing from taking in Ritsuka's mana. He looks open. He looks full. In the silence that stretches between them, a nest of light in the middle of darkness, Ritsuka's eyes mist.

_One who knows love cannot fall._

"Edmond..."

"It's time to go to sleep, Master."

And then.

Ritsuka wakes in his pajamas in bed, clock reading seven am. 

The light is bright, painful on his tired eyes. He gets dressed with a groggy head, steps out of his room and nearly trips, only steadied by a hand reaching out from his scrunched up shadow to grab at his ankle. Ritsuka stares down at his shadow in disbelief before he laughs, his laughter flooding the hall.

Roaring like a tiger.

Ritsuka takes to Chaldea with his shadow escort one foot behind, ever hopeful to catch his Master the next time he should fall.


End file.
